How To: Easy Ways to Add LED Lighting to Your Occean Boat

Boat owners are finding many benefits to adding LED lighting to their boats. It’s becoming a popular option and it helps create a unique atmosphere. With a combination of LED lights and a controller, you can pick one color or cycle through many to create a festive party. The best thing is, it isn’t really all that difficult to add LED lighting to your boat.

In this article, we will look at the advantages and disadvantages of marine LED lighting. We will also discuss some easy options for your next upgrade and touch on some installation tips to get you started.

Benefits of Marine LED Lighting

The pros of upgrading to LED lighting on your boat far outweigh any cons. Here are a few to consider.

1. Energy Efficient: Most people choose to use LED boat lights because of efficiency reasons. Unlike other lighting options, the LED bulbs are going to consume far less power, helping you save money in the long run.
2. No Heat: LED lights don’t overheat like other bulbs. Because of this aspect, you can use the LED lights for long periods without worrying about your safety.
3. Many Applications: LED boat lights are used in many areas on your vessel. You can use them for more lighting, to attract fish or create the perfect party scene. There’s no limit to the atmospheres you can create.
4. Many Colors: In addition to the various applications, you can also choose a variety of colors. Light up your boat with red, blue, green, or white.
5. Long Service Life: LED lights last up to 50,000 hours, so you won’t be replacing these anytime soon.
6. Dimmable: LEDs come in dimmable varieties to change their appearance. Just make sure you choose a product that offers this option.

How to Install LED Lighting to Your Boat

Even if you are a novice, you should be able to make some LED upgrades without much help. The main thing to remember is that all LED lights will require a 12-volt power supply.

Companies like Wet Sounds, Kicker, and Fusion make a controller for your speakers and lighting that makes everything easier. Instead of soldering the connections, you can put all of the wirings into one convenient plug and move on.

To use a controller such as this, follow these steps:

1. Attach a male connector to the speaker’s LED wires (or if you’re just using RGB lights without speakers, just connect to the light wires).
2. Attach the female connector to wiring running the power source.
3. Connect the box to a 12-volt power source, usually where the stereo is wired for power.
4. Use the handy remote to choose a single color or set up a multicolor response mode.
5. With a multicolor light system, the bar will use red, blue, and green base LEDs to create the available colors. Each of these base colors requires its own power source. Thankfully, there are 4-wire bundle
6. connects that take the three wires for each LED color and include a ground wire for a simple connection.

You just connect one to the light source and use the other for your controller box or power source.